2 ms·

Yes, exclusive fullscreen mode applications are not running in a window, so they can have zero frames of latency (though almost all don't, for various reasons).

Yes, exclusive fullscreen mode applications are not running in a window, so they can have zero frames of latency (though almost all don't, for various reasons). I am not sure about borderless fullscreen mode, I think this may also have an optimization that can eliminate the 1 frame delay. But normal windows always get the delay. There is also a feature designed to let applications bypass this delay in windowed mode using GPU hardware overlays, however it needs GPU driver support and it is not supported on Nvidia or AMD drivers AFAIK. Basically nobody uses it.

corysama 6y ago
MS had a big push to completely deprecate exclusive fullscreen a couple years ago by improving borderless fullscreen to match it.
- Sunspark 6y ago
  I'm not sold that borderless fullscreen matches it. I can see the difference in video panning between exclusive fullscreen and borderless. Granted, it is not a huge difference, but it does exist. At the end of the day we continue become further and further abstracted from the hardware. Input lag on the display, input lag in the device, etc.
  - modeless 6y ago
    Video panning differences don't have anything to do with input lag. The only way fullscreen exclusive mode would change the appearance of video panning (bugs aside) is if it changed the mode of the monitor so the refresh rate matched the video frame rate (or equivalently used G-sync or Freesync to do the same).
Sunspark 6y ago
Madvr on Windows for video playback supports both windowed hardware overlay and fullscreen exclusive mode as options so that is one application which exists.
- modeless 6y ago
  This may refer to the old style video-specific YUV overlays, which I don't think DWM uses or supports these days. Video playback doesn't need low latency anyway, just predictable latency, which DWM can provide in normal operation. Fullscreen exclusive mode support is still common in games.

corysama 6y ago

MS had a big push to completely deprecate exclusive fullscreen a couple years ago by improving borderless fullscreen to match it.

Sunspark 6y ago
I'm not sold that borderless fullscreen matches it. I can see the difference in video panning between exclusive fullscreen and borderless. Granted, it is not a huge difference, but it does exist. At the end of the day we continue become further and further abstracted from the hardware. Input lag on the display, input lag in the device, etc.
- modeless 6y ago
  Video panning differences don't have anything to do with input lag. The only way fullscreen exclusive mode would change the appearance of video panning (bugs aside) is if it changed the mode of the monitor so the refresh rate matched the video frame rate (or equivalently used G-sync or Freesync to do the same).

Sunspark 6y ago

Madvr on Windows for video playback supports both windowed hardware overlay and fullscreen exclusive mode as options so that is one application which exists.

modeless 6y ago
This may refer to the old style video-specific YUV overlays, which I don't think DWM uses or supports these days. Video playback doesn't need low latency anyway, just predictable latency, which DWM can provide in normal operation. Fullscreen exclusive mode support is still common in games.